It was good times, I was totally surprised! Getting to eat at Chelo’s is one of those things I’d like to do on every New England trip, but since we moved our time up north is usually too limited. I had the roast beef sandwich, which is super tasty and I think their specialty (besides cake). I thought I was stuffed, but found more eating room when some birthday cake was brought to the table.

It was good food and good prizes including a certain robot movie on dvd, a new tv remote so we can see all channels our tv provides over the airwaves, and lots of gift cards including one to Home Depot which we used to….

TedPrep
…. get paint and brushes to paint Ted’s room. His room is pretty close to being baby-ready now thanks to all the sweet gifts people keep sending him, but the walls were plain white, so we got a couple of gallons of a light blue paint and went to town. I think it’s the nicest looking room in the house now. We’ll post some photos soon.

Pancakes!
Back in the day my mom would make us pancakes for supper from Corn Muffin mix. I’m not sure I ever saw a box of corn muffin mix be transformed into muffins, but they always made good pancakes. I hadn’t ever run into them in the outside world though.

Tonight we ventured to the International House of Pancakes which just opened in the town next to us for some fine dining. To my surprise (and pancake-related joy) I found that they now serve corn muffin pancakes! I ordered some and they were almost exactly like I remember… except mom never served them with the carafe of coffee like IHOP does (probably for good reason).

This year we decided to tell our families we’d not be joining them again. I needed to save my vacation time for Ted’s birth in 2008 and with Kate working in retail, we wouldn’t be able to make it up north for Christmas. This was what we told them. This was, as it turns out, a lie.

Just after Thanksgiving we started putting the plan together. We found an operative (Kate’s step-dad Bill) in the north who we could trust with our plans and work as our point person. We found a transport vector to get us up the coast (a cheap car rental) and our operative arranged extraction back to Rockland-Ave (they drove us home yesterday).

With logistics taken care of, we started our campaign of misinformation. Emails and phone calls were made. We told our family it would be another “Skype Christmas.” We asked them to check on the status of presents we said were shipped up north. We even used Rockland-ave.com as a way to say we are celebrating in the south.

With work arrangements taken care of and rations issued to the cats, we went dark on Saturday and hit the roads. Our point-man Bill kept in contact with us through the trip, advising us of the situation up north. After 15 hours in the squeekiest rental car ever, we were locked in on our first surprise target.

Our first victim was occasional Rockland-ave poster and semi-frequent visitor Chris, who’s door we knocked on at 12:30am on Sunday morning. She was not prepared for guests, and too sleepy to realize what was going on at first. We then had her call our operative to start the second surprising – Kate’s mom. She was dragged out of bed under false pretenses only to find her youngest daughter waiting outside her bedroom door.

Having shocked and awed most of Kate’s family on Sunday and Monday, we had to maintain radio silence if were were to surprise my family on Tuesday (Christmas day). I made a decoy blog posting, as if it were just any old weekend at Rockland-ave. I sent emails as if they were from work, and kept checking our home answering machine just in case someone decided to call.

Christmas day we hit the road early and headed to see my folks. It was pretty sweet to surprise them, Kristen and Josh, and lots of extended family.

The whole weekend was great, and felt way too short. We got lots of good eats and a car full of prizes (including the pictured Optimash Prime) and lots of good stuff for Ted. We also got to spend time with new cousin Jack, who was enjoying his first Christmas and taking the pressure of the holiday season in stride.

Here are some pics:

It was great see a plan like this come together with resulting dropped-jaws on our relative’s faces.

On Friday we went to a party for our friend Bob (who lives in the same house as Scott). This too was a surprise party, so careful planning and deciept were in the air. . Pete distracted the target while the whole thing was set up. It was a fun night, we played a lot of poker and, luckily for me, no money was exchanged because I was taken to the cleaners by the card sharks sitting at the table with us.

Here are some photos from the evening.

A few weeks ago I contracted the services of two birthday party mercenaries in an effort to totally compromise the birthday girl. (w/help from Cheech). Many email were exchanged! Who would bring cupcakes? Where would we have the festivities?

I originally wanted to go to Purgatory Chasm for the party, but the region has come under some pretty intense rain during the past week, so it was out of the question. My plan was to use Hike Club member Scott as a decoy…. but that just wasn’t going to happen with the rain.

I had to think fast! Were Kate to get suspicious, all could be lost! Or at least the surprise could be lost! And that would have been a drag! My sister was coming home the day of the party, and my parents offered to relocate the party to their place (phew!), so I convinced Kate that instead of hiking, she’d be in for a visit with the inlaws.

It was believable, and Saturday morning we were off. I was so nervous! Trying to secretly coordinate things, and keep cool in front of the target was no easy task. The moment came, and she was surprised! Lots of friends and family were there and we had a fun afternoon. I was completely relieved that we were able to successfully surprise our birthday mark.

Happy Birthday Kate!!!